1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to networking, and more particularly, to a system and method for switching in an energy efficient network.
2. Introduction
Energy costs continue to escalate in a trend that has accelerated in recent years. Such being the case, various industries have become increasingly sensitive to the impact of those rising costs. One area that has drawn increasing scrutiny is the IT infrastructure. Many companies are now looking at their IT systems' power usage to determine whether the energy costs can be reduced. For this reason, an industry focus on energy efficient Ethernet networks (IEEE 802.3az) has arisen to address the rising costs of IT equipment usage as a whole (i.e., PCs, displays, printers, switches, servers, network equipment, etc.).
In designing an energy efficient solution, one of the considerations is network link utilization. For example, many network links are typically in an idle state between sporadic bursts of data traffic. An additional consideration for an energy efficient solution is the extent to which the traffic is sensitive to buffering and latency. For example, some traffic patterns (e.g., HPC cluster or high-end 24-hr data center) are very sensitive to latency such that buffering would be problematic. Implementation of various solutions in various applications is based on an energy efficiency control policy that can govern the behavior of a network device in achieving energy savings.